It was in New Zealand two winters ago that I got to wondering about the pantheon of left-hand batsmen. I was doing some background stuff on Garry Sobers, generally regarded as pre-eminent, although one whose position at the very pinnacle is often challenged by champions of Brian Lara and Graeme Pollock. So I asked Geoff Boycott, who knows about batting. So come on, Fiery, which of this majestic triumvirate was the best? Sobers, he said. Why so, I asked? Because, he felt, Pollock had a relative weakness against spin and Lara could be unsettled by extreme pace, while Sobers had no discernible weakness beyond an after-hours lifestyle that would have Ian Botham running up the white flag. And somehow Sobers made even that into a virtue.

The odd thing, though, is that this particular debate should occur as if left-handers are a rarity, while in fact their numbers appear to be increasing almost exponentially. If they do not quite eclipse right-handers then the impression is they are getting close to parity. Quite why there has been this upsurge over the past decade or so is hard to pin down. In part, it may be that to the concept of right-handed as the "correct" way is more readily challenged. Indeed, given that the majority of left-hand batsmen are actually right-handed people, it is the logical way to play if it is accepted that batting should be governed by the top-hand on the handle. Role models too have an influence: the more left-handers there are the more youngsters want to emulate them

I have always loved the variety that left-handers – batsmen or indeed bowlers – bring to the game. Sometimes I would watch a passage of play reflected in the Lord's dressing room balcony doors just to reinforce that left-handers are by no means mirror images of right-handers. It is all in the angles. For some reason, a casual waft from David Gower (happy birthday Stoat, by the way) never looked so aesthetically pleasing the wrong way round.

The modern cricket world changes though, evolving at such a pace it is hard to keep up. At the moment, the first shots of the English domestic season are being fired three and a half thousand miles away in the Middle East, while the rise of Twenty20 has so transformed the cricket landscape that the International Cricket Council, feeling that its blue-riband 50-overs-a-side World Cup is under threat from the shortest form, commissioned from the Academy for Statistical Studies an analysis into what might be done to help beef up a format that to many has lost its lustre. Some of the Academy's findings, currently being considered by the ICC cricket committee, are quite startling. On average, for example, according to their research, up to 40 minutes playing time per innings is lost as a direct result of left-hand batsmen – particularly when partnered by a right-hander – and left-arm bowlers, through necessary hold-ups in play while sightscreens are moved, fields readjusted, and the square-leg umpire crosses over. When drinks breaks and normal intervals are added on, it means roughly two and three quarter hours taken from a match for extraneous reasons. That is a lot of potential overs.

It is as a direct result of this that the ICC is considering an option so radical that traditionalists, and even some progressives, will be reaching for the smelling salts. From 2015 onwards, it could be proposed, the World Cup should be contested only by right-hand batsmen and bowlers, consigning the cack-handers to the sidelines. The arguments are that the game will be speeded up, that captains will spend less time and mental energy directing traffic, while there is an obvious (and rare) benefit for bowlers in that a consistent line will no longer be disrupted by batsmen rotating the strike. Batsmen, too, will benefit from the lack of rough caused by left-arm pace men bowling over the wicket, and the enforced absence of left-arm spinners to exploit that scoured by the right-armers. Groundsmen say that with no bowler operating from round the wicket either, repair and maintenance of their pitches will be easier.

Quite apart from the outcry, and the debate over switch-hitting, there would surely be the prospect of charges of discrimination. However, it is said the ICC hope to circumvent any such legal challenges by ruling that only left-handers born after 1 April 1990 will be excluded from the World Cup from 2015 onwards. So a gradual phasing out, which is good news for the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Alastair Cook and Mitchell Johnson. Whether the next left-hand generation will stand for this remains to be seen, though, and FICA, the international players representative body, is sure to be involved at an early stage. If nothing were to be resolved then there must be a chance of a breakaway sinister league. Personally, I think that this way madness lies.

For those of you concerned by this dramatic development, rest assured that this was an April Fool's joke